Sunday, May 27, 2012

The World Is Taking Crazy Pills (Pt.2)

China criticized a “woeful” human rights record in the United States
on Friday, a day after a U.S. report said Beijing’s own record is
getting worse, with harsh crackdowns on dissidents.

“The United States’ tarnished human rights record has left it in no
state — whether on a moral, political or legal basis — to act as the
world’s ‘human rights justice,’” China said in an annual report on U.S.
human rights.

The report cited the arrests of protesters participating in the
Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States. Many protesters, it
said, accused police of brutality.

It also said the United States has “fairly strict restrictions” on
the Internet, saying the U.S. Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act both
have clauses about monitoring the Internet, giving the government or
law enforcement organizations power to monitor and block any Internet
content “harmful to national security.”

Chinese dissident Chen’ new life “The facts contained in the report
are a small yet illustrative fraction of the United States’ dismal
record on its own human rights situation,” China’s report said.

Normally Japan writes open letters to China about this sort of thing along the vein of: "What the hell!" and "Who the hell do you think you are?!" and "Did you just say that? Are you drunk? Stop eating those fetus pills! They're making you crazy and just EW!". If the US (or any other country, for that matter) had any moral or intestinal fortitude they would tell China to cram their insufferable hypocrisy, arrogance, greed and bloodlust in their ears.

Bishop Harry Jackson, senior pastor at Hope Christian Church, is
leading a coalition of 176 religious leaders against President Barack
Obama’s declared support for gay marriage and the repeal of the Defense
of Marriage Act.

“We want to know whether he is going to use the bully pulpit of the
presidential office to absolutely erase the image of biblical marriage
from the face of the earth,” said Jackson at the Capitol on May 24.

“Voters need to know whether they have a friend or an assent, an
enemy to an institution that God has ordained,” he added. “Some of us
have taken his statements as a declaration of political war against the
venerable institution of marriage.”

“In the African-American community, many people are saying they made
him do that, we don’t understand why he did that,” said Jackson. “We
don’t believe that really was the president’s intent. Others have given
high fives in the backroom saying, ‘he got paid.’ We don’t really know
what the intent of the president is except that we know that is not just
an isolated incident. Some further action will follow.”

American clergy of all denominational stripes should be ashamed of whatever involvement they had in letting Obama into office in the first place. Whether it was white shame or the thrill of seeing some unvetted black man in the Oval Office, their moral failure to critically evaluate the man who would lead them can only be somewhat redeemed by their endless campaigning to remove him.

A group of Democratic female senators on Wednesday declared war on
the so-called “gender pay gap,” urging their colleagues to pass the
aptly named Paycheck Fairness Act when Congress returns from recess next
month. However, a substantial gender pay gap exists in their own
offices, a Washington Free Beacon analysis of Senate salary data reveals.

Murray, who has repeatedly accused Republicans of waging a “war a
women,” is one of the worst offenders. Female members of Murray’s staff
made about $21,000 less per year than male staffers in 2011, a
difference of 35.2 percent.

That is well above the 23 percent gap that Democrats claim
exists between male and female workers nationwide. The figure is based
on a 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report, and is technically accurate.
However, as CNN’s Lisa Sylvester has reported,
when factors such as area of employment, hours of work, and time in the
workplace are taken into account, the gap shrinks to about 5 percent.

A significant “gender gap” exists in Feinstein’s office, where women
also made about $21,000 less than men in 2011, but the percentage
difference—41 percent—was even higher than Murray’s.

Boxer’s female staffers made about $5,000 less, a difference of 7.3 percent.

49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at
least one member received some type of government benefit in the first
quarter of 2011.

Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more
complicated by recent Census Bureau data showing that nearly half of the
people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one
government benefit, and many likely received more than one.

The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up
from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter
of 2008.

The increase in recent years is likely due in large part to the
lingering effects of the recession. As of early 2011, 15% of people
lived in a household that received food stamps, 26% had someone enrolled
in Medicaid and 2% had a member receiving unemployment benefits.
Families doubling up to save money or pool expenses also is likely
leading to more multigenerational households. But even without the
effects of the recession, there would be a larger reliance on
government.

Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word “hero”? I
feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to
me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.
Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of
anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances
in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing
fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we
marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong
about that.